Upgraded Currency

 In ye olde Dragon Warriors, Coin was Copper, Silver and Gold.. but in Dungeon World we have

A Multitude of Coinage

Each kingdom tend to make their own coinage, and the exchange rate is not common knowledge, for reasons (below). Common folk, within the kingdom are barely going to understand their coinage going up or down outside their own town, let alone country, if it costs a silver florin for a barrel of wine today, it'll cost a silver for a barrel next year, and anyone trying to tell you otherwise is a cheat, and a liar, and will be run out of town.

Since almost any town will have some kind of 'barrel' of 'alcohol' which will invariably costs 1 silver, there will always be some kind of pushback on inflation. Also, because the god of inflation has been imprisoned by several very powerful heroes who want prices to stay the same.

So, Coinage never has to worry about being devalued, prices will, with fluctuations from supply and demand, always hover around the same value. and lifestyles as well.

Copper is for the poor, people who need to trade in copper are considered lower class, and the lower class love it, because they always managed to get the better end of a deal when some middle class pays for things with silver, and no change.

Silver is the trademans and merchants main coin, they will happily deal with all varied forms of coinage, and with the help of a street mage, always ensured that they don't get ripped off.

Gold is the coin of Kings.. and Nobles, and Gentry and people who want to be Nobles and or Gentry, and Heroes.. because Heroes somehow seem to be finding so much of the stuff.

But, Like many things in life, its not so easy to be carrying around all this coinage.

In The old Dragon Warriors, with a 10:1 ratio on things, and 10 coins to enough to carry let alone 100, Buying a peasants house at 10 gold, is only 1000 x the cheapest coin, so 1000 hours labour = a house? right?

Well, Then along came realism.. Dungeon World started looking at the metals in circulation and determined that Pewter, at least medieval, magical world Pewter, was slightly more expensive to make than silver (which bends and can technically be magic'd away) has magic resistant properties, To the point where a coin of pewter is worth 10 silver, and a gold is worth 10 pewter. Interestingly, Pewter contains lead, and is constantly poisoning people, but with an abundance of magical healing, its not noticed like we know of on Earth.

Then too, the common class decided that since wood is a worthy substance by itself, and people of certain class want a kind of recognition, certain woods, stained and sealed in a resin like substance, would count as a kind of thieves world coinage. Not as simple to make as just melting down some copper, but still plentiful enough, its has an almost 15:1 ration to copper.

Well of course, its a little easier to carry half a coin, than 5 other coins, and don't clink so much in the wallet, so snipped coins started to make circulation, til the powers that be decided that we can't have snipped chunks of metal where its unsure if its 45% or 55%. So the Moons started to make an appearance, and you can get gold, pewter, silver and copper moons in many states.

Then later, magical fused coinage, Gelds were discovered in magic councils, considered as worth much more to a mage than anyone else, they are often stamped differently by the magi, but not required. A geld might be accidentally traded by non magi for their metal worth, and the lucky mage will pick one up at the metal price, but its usually considered to be 20x the worth of the coin to a magi, and as such as become a worthy coin for the wealthy.

Note: Copper and Silver Gelds can cope with only 1 magic point, as they tend to melt with more infused, and as such are closer to 10x worth for a mage, but while Gold can normally cope with 3 magic points, Gold has been known when fused with some metals to cope with as much as 7 magic points. 

Rarer is the Octiron Coin, rumoured to be created when 8 magic points are infused into a gold coin using a crystal rod, The Octiron coin is somewhere in the range of 1000x gold crowns. 

We have not touched on the chunkier and heavier Dwarven varieties, which are typically twice the size and three times the worth, as they resist any tampering, and the artistic elven varieties which are only worth more for their beauty, as a coinage, they lose worth as soon as human hands mar and tarnish their faces, and return to bland versions within a few days of common usage. though, still worth 1.5 times normal worth to a clever eye.

Many 'lesser' races still trade goods, but use human coinage if its available, yet, pewter and silver tend to be pooled together.

In the Demon realms, trapped souls exist in a crystal like structure when touched, but in a softer form when not, are both used as a currency and a consumable, and when brought to the surface are traded in back alleys and black markets. 

Pretty much, once anything is common enough, it becomes a kind of currency, as such the apothecary world trades internally with empty vials as they can cost somewhere between a pewter and a gold to manufacture, and are only really used by apothecaries and heroes. 

So what of these exchanges? well, the kings of the world, have for the most part discovered one thing to keep their countries in flow. exchanging currency between traders and Adventurers can be, in itself, profitable enough to maintain the border guards, passes, diplomats and trade relations, instead of war. War is costly, the benefit is limited, but currency exchange?

So when players get to the edge of the country, there might be a border guard who can 'change' their money.. its ALWAYS a rip off.. 10 Zonti for 9 Jebas? but on return, 10 Jebas for 9 Zonti? hang on?

but in town, no-one is going to.. legally.. exchange other coins.. except of course, for a fee. 

DnD Hit Points vs Lightning Bolt

This was asked on facebook the other day:

How much damage should a lightning bolt (one from the sky, not magic) do?

Resulting in a BUNCH of answers, Most of them answering with the premise that the question uses the world "Should" and suggests the DMG is wrong and the OP wants a more realistic answer.

The underlying problem is, DnDs HP system doesn't easily allow for 'pure' damage, its 'related' damage.

When a character takes a blow from an opponent, its suggested that the HP loss is a total combined amount from sweat, exhaustion, pain, bruising as much as broken skin, bleeding, internal damage and destruction of vital organs.

It also suggests that higher level characters can take more sweat, exhaustion, pain and bruising, before getting severly tired, and actual damage is mitigated by the character dodging enough to reduce any real damage, relaxing the body enough at the time of impact to reduce muscular damage, AND the idea that a higher level character likely has taken a few blows and their skin is a tad tougher.

So a 1st level character with 8hp, taking 8hp wound is going to be in so much pain and shock, they are reduced to a blubbering mess, and possibly will die just from the shock of the blow.

ok, so you take
3d4, 7d6, 7d8, 9d10 and 3d12 damage,
Still alive? 

While a 10th level character with 80hp, is going to feel a pang of pain, but will have 'mitigated' the blow as though it was only actually 1hp of damage if he were a 1st level.

This of course is often forgotten, players get the wrong impression that their character can take several hits from several weapons, and just keep going.

But when you get involved with actual damage, it goes awry.

Spell lightning involved factors such as dodge, target missing, arcing off nearby metals, seeing the spell coming and getting partially or mostly out of the way, even when hit, where a higher level character can 'notice' these things and mitigate the damage taken, a low level character takes the full brunt of it.

But pure damage should ignore level, and be as equal in killing a high level as it does a 0th peasant.

I think DnD 2nd edition used to have damage dice as a value, and pure damage was multiplied by damage dice. Creatures had damage dice, so certain spells or effects would do d10 x damagedice. But some creatures had d4 damage dice, so a d10dd effect would likely kill them, but other d12 or d20 dd creatures, could likely survive.

<rant>Of course, the modern gamer can't even add up basic numbers to do their own experience, so trying to calculate damage dice would ruin the experience and destroy their immersion</rant>

This is one of the main reasons I liked Dragon Warriors. your health was just that, Health. Checking if the attack was better than your opponents defence, if their armour was thick enough to absorb the blow all came way before health. and health represented the wounds that would bring you closer to death. You were lucky if you got 1 per rank, so while a 10th ranked barbarian with 16 HP fared better against a 10th ranked sorcerer with 9 HP, it was not in such a magnitude of difference than a d20 fireball couldn't kill them both, and all the 6HP peasants standing around.

I took it a few steps further for DungeonWorld v1->3 but HP was a staple for roleplaying games, so I stuck with what players expected..

Version 4, was a time of stripping back to basics and redoing the engine from the ground up with what worked, and trashing the flawed, old-school, chunky rules and looking at what really mattered.

Game Speed, Player Understanding, Luck and Realism.

Players, looking at a situation, see 100HP, see 2d10 damage from opponent, see average 10damage, see 8 rounds of safe combat. Wade in, taking blow after blow, not caring, just need to burn down the opponents HP.
Some DMs will tell them the HP of the monster, and the players will cross reference their damage and say "oh no, we need X more rounds, then include a few heal spells, and viola", why bother rolling the dice.

Sometimes players will slow down their game, to figure this kind of thing out..

So for games speed, My research suggested that players should just 'take damage' as the GM tells them, and if its excessive, make a check. The check should slow them down a few seconds.. because like their character, they are grasping at their chest/wound, life and death on the line.. ANY time a check is being made vs damage, the player can die right there, the tension is real, players are far more engaged and understand the threat.

This could be a lucky 1st level
or an unlucky 20th level

Artist:Gui Guimaraes

Whats more interesting is that a character can, and should, be able to be taken down in any given hit. Not being hit at all should be priority no.1. Also, monster can and should, be taken down with one hit too, if its placed well. Players should be looking to get that hit, and not be hit. and be creative with that.

Luckily, they are Heroes, and can mitigate the wound or the check vs death with the luck rules, allowing lower level characters the chance to avoid mistakes made, and higher level characters should have players who have learnt not to make such mistakes.

There is no way to tell if your going to die from a single 8pt wound or 20 x 2pt wounds, so you can't calculate the odds of surviving several blows from a creature. Don't get hit is the way to survive.

Eventually if you keep putting your character in extremely dangerous situations, odds are they will die, so players will often retire a character that's reached a point of no return, and use them as a support character for their next character to join and learn from.

The Game runs faster, Players don't have 'pure numbers' to game, luck plays its part and its far more realistic without sacrificing game play.

and a lightning bolt will kill 20% of people, no matter their level.. though, holding a metal blade in a lightning storm is more likely to get you hit.

Board games are Card games are c-Roleplaying games?

I follow kickstarter board games quite heavily, actually, all kinds of games, if its being Kickstarted, I want to read about it, this gradually started about 2012 or so, and I was a kind of local guru on 'what makes a good kickstarter' enough to run some workshops for some people in different industries that had heard about me..

After I returned to Oz, It slowed a little, yet I kept my finger on the pulse.. just ignored that pulse a little too often and missed 2-3 great games (and likely ended up paying more than I should have to get them later on)

The most interesting thing I've noticed recently is, the blurring of the lines between the different genres of

Board game, Card games and c-Roleplay Games

Lets double check we're on the same page with these things.

Board games of 2011!

Board games, typically have a board, pieces, sometimes of board, sometimes of wood or plastic. They have rules for moving/placing/removing the pieces, which results in score or win/lose conditions.

Card games, produced by fantasy flight!

Card games, typically have cards (made of thin boards ;) ) which are played according to rules about placing, moving or removing, which results in scoring or win/lose conditions.

If you think Diablo is an RPG, stop reading and go away

c-(components of or computer variety) roleplay games, have rules, which are played according to rules, about placing, moving or removing (from your character sheet) which represents an avatar. c-Roleplaying games result in a win/lose condition (and sometimes even score)

Yes, I know.. Roleplaying games, are different, that is, REAL roleplay games, are a set of rules or guidelines in order to tell a fun, yet believable story, some of that fun is understanding the restrictions of the character you are playing, which is represented by a set of rules, but those rules are to help people to feel fairness and order, not to represent any value or score or win conditions.. which seems to be lost on anyone who grew up with the c-variety of roleplay games as staple.. but thats not the topic of this blog.. I just wanted to clarify for you, so the comments section won't have anyone ... 

well forget it.. people comment, its the internet, so I'll just leave that.. 

So, to re-clarify, Computer/Component roleplay games are about levels, bonuses, equipment and numbers, of monsters killed. be it in a computer, or a psudeo-RPG-in-a-book variety.

These are board game cards, almost as complex as D&D

Back to my point

I've recently seen some awesome looking board games, that have charactersheets.. not Dungeon crawls, I like dungeon crawls, they break down the idea of the game and simplify it to be played in 45 minutes. my first real board game, was Heroquest. ahh Heroquest.

Heroquest is the best game ever made.

No, I'm talking about these new games, where the in-game charactersheet is more complex than Dragon warriors.. the simplest roleplay game I know of. 

Maybe, just maybe I've played for DW than any other system (except my own, based on DW)

Take this concept.. Monster are attacking a castle, the players are playing heroes, who are slinging spells, making actions, to hold back these monsters. At the same time they're placing workers to shore up the battlements, set up traps or defences to push back the invaiders, or gathering resources to prepare. Sounds ok as a game, yet the 'heroes' are not just Health tokens, Magic tokens, some weapon cards and skill/spell cards, no, they have progression, they level up, they gain backstory, they gain so much more.. More than a fully realised DW character.. If I wanted a roleplay character on a board game.. why wouldn't I simply get my DM to create the plot to 'play' that game? shouldn't be THAT hard right? or is $90 worth learning a new RP system, just for the stand alone, repeatable quest?

I think it might be just me, I don't like to watch a movie twice, or a tv-series.. if I wasn't concentrating the first time, it wasn't good enough for me to watch again.. the same with roleplay.. If I've entered the dungeon, defeated the monsters and died.. well so be it.. that character is dead.. I don't want to come back with a new guy, because 'I' the player have already experienced the first 6 rooms of this dungeon...

Except of course for Legacy Games, now that's different.

So replaying a board game with a different, roleplayable, character, just seems... off..

There was that dice rolling game, where you matched, Yatzee style, a set of rules to form.... a Character. A character, as GM I would NEVER allow in any of my games.. so min-maxed, so ultimately broken. How a child would survive the rigors of medieval times with a charisma of less than 7, I'll never know...

Then there are board games, Dungeon Crawl board games, with deck building mechanics.. advance in the dungeon by fighting monster cards, or drawing equipment cards or helper cards, try not to wake the dragon, but try to grab all the lot before the other players.. Its an awesome game, it mashes all the parts together in a worthy style, and is enjoyable.. once or twice.. luckily, it has no character sheet, maybe that's why it works.

I think the broken part is, the use of RP components, rather than real RP mechanics. In the world of gamification, there were components such as points, badges and leaderboards, all extrinsic motivators. All shiny, all broken. Why? because they only bring IN the user, they don't KEEP the user. RP components, Weapons, Armour, Skills and Levels, bring in players, but they stay because they get to build stories.

Look at Minecraft, No points, No badges, no Leaderboards, just self created goals, exploration and learning. people 'advanced' by discovering upgrades, not because the game told them to, but because it just felt like the next progression.

I'm slowly building a graph of games.. Why? because last time I did, I predicted Minecraft.. 1st person games, flooded market looking for something new / different 1st person games.. crafting games, a new emergent genre of game, makes the market interested, open world games, a solid genre that people trust, and look out for.. not specifically fantasy, nor science fiction.. could be both or neither.. gap in the market.. first half decent game to hit that gap wins.. Minecraft!

So the graph of card/board games.. the rise of deck building and worker placement games two emergent genres, looking for a solid genre that people trust, Euro games? and a flooded market? Board? Card? Roleplay? that's the final unknown.. I know where I'm putting my money... 

Craft Based Roleplay - the Missing Element

     While some might think its a bad idea to reveal your ideas, lest someone steal them for themselves, I don't think that either my idea is new, nor unique, just that I'll be adding it in a way that hasn't really been done in roleplay games. Crafting for adventurers...

Crafting for your Roleplay Group

     One thing that irked me in many systems for years was the inability to really make a half decent magical weapon. At least with a semi-realistic sense of the idea.

     My first encounter with the crafting rules was from Dragon Warriors, Book 2: Simplistic at best, once a Mystic reaches 4th rank, they can begin to craft +1 items, 6th for +2 and 9th for +3. The mystic must go off to a place to remain in solitude, and fast in order to 'attune' themselves to the mystical powers and then begin the 'creation' of an item. There is no talk of 'costs' other than time, 25 days to make a +1 arrow, 100 days for +1 weapon or armour, up to 1500 days for a +3 weapon..

     Yes its simplistic and flawed, A party could leave their 9th ranked Mystic off in some wilderness 'creating' the Warrior a +3 set of Studded Leather armour, and the group returns 1500 days later, now all 15th ranked characters, having acquired several other +2 and +3 sets of armour that are as good if not better from quests and such.. sorta defeated the purpose of creating magical items in the first place.

     Sure a GM could attempt to balance the system, but what ever you do, you'd probably be spending hundreds of hours coming up with some kind of specialized algorithm, that'd break either game balance or usability.. 25 days for a +1 arrow? just to be shot and lost in the very next combat? It only gives +1 to attack, ABR and Damage, its not all that good.

     Dungeons and Dragons does it just as bad, there are countless blogs talking about it just seems to be a kind of 'cash sink' for the GM to ensure the players have a reason to go out looking for more quests, rather than retiring.. even though 12+ level characters are pretty much expected to retire (according to the older forms of the rules, it can be argued) and are only brought out for epic world ending events.

    Rolemaster, Tunnels and Trolls, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, they have their own rules & houserules, blogs about it, but at the end of the day its pretty much the same.. Heroes acquire treasure, heroes get rich, heroes have little need to quest for the mundane magical items such as +1 items, but they still have a basci need for them, heroes sink cash into NPCs that make the items, or they sink less cash but more time OR experience points (another sink system to keep mages from getting TOO powerful) into making magical items with broader choices.

     Seems like not many people really got into the whole crafting side of things... 

Could be just your experience

Yes, I understand, I haven't played every single game with every single GM, and there are likely some half-decent games that are all about creating interesting items. Yet if you read up on this, by the very creators of D&D it seems that I'm on par:

     "The statement "I want to make a magic item" has the power to freeze a DM's blood. Players, too, can find the item creation process intimidating. Sometimes these fears are justified, especially when someone invents an entirely new item and then wants to sit down and make it - Skip Williams"

    I have crafted some adventures where players are trying to acquire the material components of weird and wonderous items, while I agree that they should have some kind of 'cost' to acquire, I am more of the opinion that it should be a cost of risk vs reward rather than a physical cost.

     I would rather stick to the idea that making a sword, be it magical, mystical or mundane, should approximately be of the same time of a real sword, 2-3 days for the weapon & 2+ weeks for the flair, but its more about "getting it right" because maybe forging a sword and getting it wrong just means melting down the blade and starting again, but if your using elementium steel, then it likely involves a few enchanted tools, some runes of protection against it (so it doesn't freeze or burn you while forging) and you'd only want to deal with it once, rather than risking deadly burns or life altering frostbite twice.

     So instead the "cost" to acquire goods, is for the group to acquire the magical forge, the mystical hammer, the tongs of fire, the cooling Pools of the frostbanes and several kilos of Elementium, Elysiuum Wood, Gems of Brightfire and Rubies of Blood. Once acquired, the Blacksmith/Mage/Mystic of the group gets to work, while the heroes rest their wounds and 3-6 weeks later, the Smith presents the Leader/Warrior of the group with "FleshForger the Magnificent" with all the bonuses (and possible flaws) of the new weapon.

Yeah, we all do that.. so whats your point?    

     Recently, (well, ok, 3 years ago now) We were tasked at Uni to make a game, and my group agreed to try making a "potion making game", We only had 13 days in total to make it (well its over 13 weeks, we had 1 day a week assigned to the task, because of other subjects, exams, studies etc) so in the end we made a game where you chose 3 ingredients and dependent on how you mixed it, it would come up with 1 of 9 possible potions/poisons.

     Now, the key underlying aspect of the game, was to experiment


---------------------------------- APOLOGIES TO READERS------------------------
Due to Google downgrading their system, this post was lost, I managed to find this much via some fancy caching, but from this point forward, I am mostly trying to remember what I wrote, appologies if it seems out of sync. Originally Published 08/04/2017
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Game

The Experimentation of how each 'part' worked, was the process of the game. In the 'morning' You acquired the 3 ingredients from the forest, randomly, mostly it gave you a 1:5 chance, twice, either gaining the whole plant, the roots, the leaves or the flower, or nothing( 2 chances). You'd return to your workshop by the end of the day, if you had purchased food from town you ate it, else you could eat the leaves or boil the roots as a substitute, no ill effects, just the loss of your days work looking for it.
Lastly, you could try to 'experiment' on your potions. Each of the three ingredients could be fried, boiled or crushed (for oils), no other information was given.
Oh and also you could go to town, in town you could buy food for 1 copper coin each meal, and meals could last 4 days (so you could buy 4 max) but while in town, you heard rumours.. someone was sick, someone had a toothache, someone wanted to poison her evil husband.
The only thing we had in the game was that all three paid money (3 copper), the 'bad' job would pay even for failed poisons, but a copper if you failed and 3 if you succeeded.
So each night, you'd make up some potions/poisons, and when you had a few, you could go to town, and try them out. The 'experiment' was on the evil husband, if he died, you knew it was a legit poison, if he didn't it sometimes made him happy, or angry or no effect.
This was the litmus test. Angry.. probably ill effects, happy, likely good effects, dead, most definitely poison.
Now at the heart of this, was percentile effects, Boil the root and you got soup, you knew this from your own experience, eat the leaves, its not killing you either, So boil the leaves? fry the leaves? crush the leaves? Each has an effect: From memory, Boiling, drew out the potent qualities, but not the oil effects, Frying would destroy the potent qualities, but keep the oil effects, and crushing, gave you a 50/50 effect of both, while eating it raw, would give you half of the potent effect, but all of the oil, So it became a maths puzzle..
Roots had 25% poisonous Oil, but 100% Nutitional Potent,
Leaves had 0% poisonous Oil and 25% healing Potent.
The Flower had 75% numbing Oil, and 10% Poison.

If you boiled the Roots and Leaves and fried the Flower, and threw away the Roots and boiled it again, you'd get a healing potion,
If you crushed the flower, added some raw, boiled the leaves and then threw out the leaves, you got a tooth numbing agent, so they could pull the tooth
and if you Boiled the flower several times, and fried the roots several times, then crushed the Boiled flowers into the roots, you got a deadly poison.   
---------------
The Key to it was trying out different combinations, on yourself, and the evil husband to figure out what did what, and how it came together.

In Roleplay

Firstly, to get this to work in roleplay, you need to have the ability of your group to get stuff made. Like stated before, getting the 'ingredients' is part one of the game, Having your players procure a Firebird feather, a Core of Sphagnum and a Dedicated Crystal, is the adventure that they get to go on.

But having the Unique Powerful item, is only interesting if it is Unique AND Powerful.

To Create this, you have to have more control over the flow of goods and services.

If your players like the idea of crafting their own gear, upgrading it, improving it, then make sure your setting works, Making standard items less common, with technological advances, just recently discovered.

Cavemen/Minecraft: The Most interesting 'inventions' game would be starting from scratch, players probably already know about sharpening stones & attaching them to sticks with vines, but how about baking clay to make moulds to heating fire hot enough to melt ores to even make metals.. Playing the game in a minecraft like environment might even be your players thing.

Shift of Ages: As the Bronze Age was in decline and the Iron Age beginning, we see a whole area of roleplay barely played. Have your entire group in the fall of rome, as the Gauls have just discovered Iron and Steel swords are a brand new thing. The Aquisition of Iron Ore becomes an adventure of its own. Or if your more inclined, Steampunk, as all manner of steam powered things get invented, and usually ones that would never work, steam powered mobile phone anyone?

Post apoc: My favourite (and one I'm building a new campaign for) When everything has gone to hell, and your players can't even get a decent weapon, unless the bring back some scrap metal from outside the safe zone.. This one ties in nicely with fantasy: The players have steel sword, but how to get EarthElementium? or Plogistonium. Bring back a chunk of Ever-cold Metal and have your blacksmith forge up one of those as a Cleaver! or Chukrum!

So, now that you've got the setting, Have an NPC in town, controlled by your rules lawyer/ numbers cruncher, 'experiment' with the numbers, What does Plgistonium do? well its fire based Elementium, All Elementiums are harder than normal steel by 2 magnitudes, Plus they do Elemental based damage, they should cut through armour, like a knife through butter. Cool that's your end point, but now, you have to decide how long are they prepared to wait?

For simplicity, since we have 4 values to go with, 2x harder, knife through butter & fire damage, then we need our blacksmith to experiment with at least 4 variables, so we'll need to get him at least 4 sets of the Ore. Then you make skill checks for the Blacksmith, if he passes, he's made progress on 1 of those 4 areas, Or maybe you can't wait that long.. how about mixing it with normal steel, and halving the final properties.. halving the experimentation time.

See this is where I got bogged down in other systems, Because weapons don't typically have hardness values or sharpness values, or strength abilities, and weapons don't cut through armour, the player dodges & the armour deflects & the person cops some of the damage, but not as real damage, but as exhaustion & its all rolled into one roll or one saving throw.. it takes away the players, and the GMs ability to make cool stuff, unless you know the whole formula for THAC0, or such.

This is why I made my system, Because Elementium can easily have +2 damage, without needing to increase the Initiative costs, it can have a 'ignores 2 points of enemies metal armour' for the ABR and it can have 'flaming weapon if exposed to air' and 'is 80.c', so players know the blade is hot, it burns, flamable objects will ignite, water will slowly boil (or at least start to get hot) and each of these areas can be 'learnt' by the blacksmith as skills:
Active Skill: Manufacture - Elementium - Fire - +1 Damage, no Inititaive cost. 
Once learnt, then he can start to take on the next skill.

This all works for the HUB system of my game, where players have an NPC friend, back in town, that they get to level up and choose his skills between adventures, so that you have a plausible way for players to be getting much better weapons, without needing handwavium or bullsh*t Ecomonic systems. 

     

The Original Stats: Warrior

For the Longest Time, The DW stats were just the same as Dragon Warrior Stats, with the addition of Ranged Attack...

But we had some problems..

Dragon Warriors Stats are: Attack, defence, Evasion, Stealth, Perception, Magical Attack, Magical Defence.

But how do you compare a Monks attack skill to a knights defence? Monks use Hand fighting.. so.. a knight has a defence modifier? or Monk has attack modifier?

Again I was kitting this wall of 'modifiers' Sure sure, it makes your charactersheet look cleaner to have one stat, then your GM has a table of modifiers to play with.. but either I was too lazy or my players wanted to have more information, we decided that this wasn't good enough..

So we had to have Melee Attack, Melee Defence, Weapon Attack and Weapon Defence.. which was sorta cool..

Then there were some great skills in Warhammer.. Strike Mighty blow, Strike to Stun, Strike to Injure. Some of the other game system had more skills of combat.. always there was a modifier.. -7, -5, -6.. when looking at what they did.. it seemed that they were just the same values, just different to what they actually did.. so why have 3 skills.. 5 skills.. 100 skills.. so we spoke to some Combat Simulations Experts, and for the most part what we got was, a strike, no matter what type.. was a kind of moment when you felt that your opponent had left themselves open, and you took advantage of that to get in a decent blow.. be it harder, faster, or to incapacitate.

So, this Damaging strike.. it was really a kind of regular skill, which in many systems were just Statistics..

Thats really what a Stat is.. its a skill thats used so regularly, by so many classes that you need its value on the front page. So thats where we put it..

Of course, the names needed a change.. Melee, Weapon Skill, Damage Strike, Block, Parry .. but sometimes you just need to get out of the way.. so.. Dodge.

Warrior Stats Down.. what next  Archer..

Health, Bruises, Bleeding and Tracking

Ever forgot to rub out the arrow box when you shoot off arrows? or had arguments with your GM about provisions or potions that you had or had not drunk?

I'm sure its staple roleplay, there are many small aspects of the game that you might forget.. If its in your favour, you turn a blind eye, but against you, well I've seen entire tables rage against the DM about whether a potion was drunk or not..

So Imagine a system, where you tick off XP bonuses for each and every stat.. I tried tick boxes, rising numbered boxes.. mathematical equations, all sorts of things.. the biggest problem was tracking.. and worse still for health..

We had introduced a kind of non-lethal damage, called Body Ready.. not sure where I got the name now.. but you had a set of boxes.. and to nominate if the physical damage you just took was light, you ticked the box.. you could 'take a breather' in combat and get back d4+ con bonus BR.. if you didn't each tick cost you a -1 to all skills & stats (out of breath) and if it was medium, you crossed the tick, you needed a full round of breathing to stop that one.. but was still only a -1  and the final heavy, circle that crossed tick.. this one need a nights rest (or at least an hour per circle)

Health was another matter, When you got cut, you got health damage and bleed damage (per 5 pts of health = 1 bleed), you needed to stauch the wound to stop it.. else you'd lose that much bleed as health per round.

Then we also had a problem, If I smacked you over the head.. how could I knock you out? most systems had a rule about, if you're at 0 HP, you're unconcious... but as often as not, you were also bleeding to death too.. we had to lower death down to -15 to be able to counter that.. but what if you were poisoned, ok so now poisons had to have more damage to match the sword + bleed numbers.. ok so what about if you fall off a cliff? slam into the ground, maybe you break your legs.. do you pass out? walk away?

Health has always had a problem in Roleplay Games, its dumbed down to make it a game.. there we are again, referring to it as a game.. well I'm sorry, but by this stage this was no longer a game, this was a way of representing reality within a game system.. its called gamification..

Yes, some of my players riled against this attitude that I had (I've changed a bit since.. but I used to be very sheldon about it)

I was slowly developing something that was no longer a roleplay game, I was trying to understand how we represent ourselves as a set of statistics... why? because that has to be the basis to things.. a solid foundation, before making things playable.. and I think its become one of the reasons why alot of players actually like my game, because they can see themselves doing things, rather than a list of actions in a choice menu.

But I digress (I'll write more about this later) At this stage of development, we had Health, Body Ready, Knockout and Death.. you could get values of up to 100 Health as a moderate 7th level character.. but to get to 120, took an extraordinary ammount of bonuses, skills and game events.. 20th level characters might get 125... but We forgot healing..

The first iteration of the game, was WHFRP, health was out of 10, starting around 3... Dragon Warriors has something similar.. starting around 8 and sometimes getting to 25.. both systems had a fairly even idea that you'd wait a few days to get back 1 point, then 1 point per day after that.. seemed ok..

.. but after we added in bleeding, we needed to multiple everyones health by 5, (so that 1-3 points of bleeding per round, was less problematic), which meant all weapons x5, ok, so that made healing easier.. you started healing 1 point on day 1, and rose by 1 per day.. by 10 days, if you were still damaged, you healed by 10 that night..

Damage dice for weapons was now broken, poisons and spells broken.. everything was broken from this bleeding rule. So we scrapped it. I had to think of something new, something that worked.. infact the whole Body ready system was flawed, but for the longest time, I had no other solution..

But we did add all the Rolemaster Criticals in.. that made things fun. 

Simplicity, Complexity and Tracking NPCs

All games have to start somewhere, and I, even as a naive 19yr old knew that I would not be able to begin with nothing.

So, over the next few years, I played (and researched) in this order: Dragon Warriors, Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Rolemaster, Gurps (fantasy), Traveller, Vampire(VtM) and Shadowrun. I then borrowed and read the base rule set for several other games, including some niche games, such as Tank Girl & DragonballZ.

By 19, I was 4 game systems into this list. I came to Warhammer via HeroQuest & AdvHeroQuest, which we a very clever marketing system for Citadel.

So I had these basic ideas: The game system needs to be rules lite in the basic design, so players can quickly make choices. Attack vs Cast spell vs Heal vs Run away, but I roleplay needed more choices too, rather than 'roll charisma'

How many times has it happened: I try to seduce the girl, roll: 20! crit, she succumbs to your charms and you bed her that night.. if only it were that easy, you'd just go into a club, say 1 line to 20-30 girls, eventually you get a crit20 and you 'win' (or in the new systems, take 20) 


The game system needs to have more reality to it. 

Not in the sense of story, play or otherwise, but the underlying maths need to be mathematical, the structure of the rules need to make sense, so that any human being can make choices in the world, which are logical, predictable and would react the same way in real life & game play. This gives players a nice sense of 'grounding' to work from.

Not having that grounding has always caused ire in games, both from my own experience, and told to me at numerous conventions. 

I had a game where I was playing a Vampire, who could speed up to perform multiple actions. I kicked a cup at my enemy, expecting it to fly across the room at heightened speed (or shatter and the peices fly across the room) but as soon as it had left the tip of my foot, it slowed down to normal speed.. the roleplay was broken by the rules (yes I know GMs should, but often side with rule books until they get more experience) an argument ensured, and the entire nights RP was soured by the lack of trust I had with the world.

So I needed a system that would follow the laws of physics from the start, THEN we could bend the rules for magic etc.

Lastly, I wanted my game world to be both dynamic and static. I can not tell you how many times I felt that the GM was pandering the players, to the point of frustration. (I have also fallen into the GMtrap, players conciously or subconciously become stupid if you let them get away with it, it also spoils the game). Usually this was because the GM had picked a campaign that was too high for the players, or too low, and had to scale it. Sure, a well written campaign can be 'scaled' but as often as not, the scaling causes things to be too easy, lulling the players into false securities, or too hard, causing them TPK more often than not (Why do players decide to keep going, when they probably know they're going to die?)

Probably because I was running a club, where each week I might have a whole new set of players, repeatedly starting campaigns, never finishing the storyline. I began to structure the game in sessions: If you got out by the end of the session, you lived for another day. If you failed, rock falls TPK. Players would look at the clock, and begin thinking about how to get out (one exception. If ALL players turned up the next week, we'd do a 'to be continued' ending)
But this created a sequence of events, in which a group of adventurers would come into the first room of a dungeon, clean it out, loot the room, then realise they were too damaged to continue, and go back to town to regroup, resupply and think it over. The following week, a new group, some of the same players, some new, would return to the dungeon, the older players would explain to the new what happened, and what they intended on next. Sometimes new players would provide new skills and find hidden treasures, or work out a puzzle to help the older team get through without harm (yes, sometimes old players would quickly make up a character relevant to the quest,just for that session,  so they COULD figure out the puzzle).

" Sir Baldwin, Hector and the Bard Zafrodi realise that their quest has come to a premature end. The Puzzle on the door is far too archaic to understand, they return to the city of Malthue and seek out a wizard. Hector, having some duties with his lord, agrees to meet them in a weeks time, leaving Baldwin and Zaf to find a suitable candidate. Along comes Hwentil the Shaman & Mystic, who mysteriously knows the Archaic Language of Hui'k Lui'k and together they figure out the door puzzle, and dispatch the undead they lie in wait behind the locking mechanism"

This meant that the world lived on between adventures.. that between the sessions, people were getting on with their medieval lives, and that was when I began to track these NPC lives, their politics and the world at large.